Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was born on this date in 1828. 10 things you might not know about him:
He was born into an affluent merchant family in the port town of Skien, Norway.
When Ibsen was about seven years old, his family’s finances took a turn for the worse. They had to sell their main family home and live in their summer residence outside of the city.
When he was 15, he left school to train as a pharmacist’s assistant. He considered university, but had already got the writing bug and decided to concentrate on writing plays instead.
His first play was called Catilina, written in 1850, when Ibsen was 22. He published it under the pseudonym "Brynjolf Bjarme". It was never performed.
His first play which made it to the stage was called The Burial Mound. It wasn’t a great success. Ibsen worked as a theatre director for some time, producing and writing plays. None of his plays during this era were great successes.
However, in due course he went on to write Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder.
It’s thought that he based many of his plays on his own life and family. Common themes include financial problems, moral conflicts and deep dark secrets.
Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism".
Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish, which was the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his lifetime.
He married Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858. They had one child, Sigurd. The couple lived in difficult financial circumstances and eventually, Ibsen became disenchanted with Norway and emigrated to Italy. Living in Italy and Germany he rarely visited Norway at all, although most of his plays were still set there.
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